Through either the companion animals my wife and I have welcomed into our home, or through the work I did at the local animal shelter as both a kennel attendant and volunteer, one of my few passions in life is providing care to and spending time with animals. For a number of years, I lived with companion rabbits—our time with them taught me a lot of patience, and gave me a heightened sense of when something might be wrong with their health. For a few years we lived with a special needs cat, and we currently are living with an Olde English Bulldog—all of these animals are of course different, for myriad reasons, but they also have a number of similarities in the personalities that if you spend enough time around them, you'll grow to see and understand. The time I spent as a volunteer and attendant at the shelter was a great lesson in how to be efficient and effective in tending to a number of animals at once—sometimes upwards of 20 cats that all needed their areas cleaned, food and water refreshed, and sometimes given medication. As a volunteer I worked with especially shy and frightened animals who had recently been surrendered and were not adjusting well to life at the shelter. This, like my own time living with rabbits, was the chance to learn more patience, and work with an animal until they open up more.